


The Reincarnated Marimo.

by Aokaga_swag



Category: One Piece
Genre: AU sort of, Angst and Humor, Badass Zoro, Crossdressing Zoro, F/M, Fem!Zoro, Fem!Zoro/Sanji, Female Zoro, Luffy Being Luffy, Reincarnation, Reincarnation at its finest, Robin being her omniscient self, SI!Zoro, Self-Insert, Strawhat shenanigans, eventual Roronoa Zoro/Sanji, just wanna get this published tbh, long chapters this time i swear, sanji - Freeform, will add more tags at a later date
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-08 15:22:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7762996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aokaga_swag/pseuds/Aokaga_swag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was as I stood, crucified in a dusty courtyard, that I wondered if the chain of events that had unfolded, were all really worth the headache and current dehydration I was being subjected to. There was a good reason for me being on the verge of death, honest. The plot must go on, and I, unfortunately, am too much of a main character to let it go to shit.</p>
<p>"God damn it! Where is that straw-hatted little shit?!"</p>
<p>Woe is me.</p>
<p>(The SI/Fem!Zoro fic that nobody asked for. )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Death. Contrary to what most people would think, was my beginning and not end.

I had never really 'lived' in the first place. You can ask my immediate family if you don't believe me, though I don't see how when they all died years before I. Mother to the birth of, well, _me_ (shocker, I know, seeing as how medicine is so advanced in this day and age). My Dad used to joke to me that it was because I was such a fat shit of a baby that I _ate_ her life force. Hardy ha ha.

Anyways. Lost him to Pancreatic Cancer when I was nineteen. No cure for that, and yet it _still_ hurt when he passed, even though we both knew it was inevitable. Huh.

Right, 'we'. My older brother and I. He kicked the bucket five years later. How, you ask? He was stabbed. By his wife. Not really a surprise, she was a crazy bitch; I had told him that, but did he listen to me? No, he married her, instead. Not to say he deserved his death or anything, bless his soul, he was just a bit of an idiot- scratch that, a _huge_ idiot. Dumbass wouldn't shut up about god damn _Anime_. But, if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have found my love for One Piece.

I was absolutely in love with it. It being the last thing I had left of my brother. The idiot had left me his whole collection of anime in his will (who the hell even _has_ a will at his age?!). What a reading that was. I had never laughed so hard, or cried so woefully. It truly was the best thing he could've left me. The very thing he devoted a part of his life to, he left to _me._

Sorry. Got a bit off track there, didn't I?

I suppose now would be the time to tell you how I died, right? Well, it started with a bottle of alcohol, and ended with a sword- sorry, a _Katana_ , as my brother would've corrected me- to my chest.

In a strange, sort of twisted way, I was oddly at peace with the way we both died in a similar fashion, obviously him not being as intoxicated and hellbent on revenge as I was, but who's really paying attention to the details. I mean, we've got the three major facts in common, don't we? Stabbed by the Katana hanging on the wall in his living room? Check. Stabbed by the same person? Check. _Stabbed_? Check.

I was twenty-seven, and a fully qualified bartender for five years running. I lived in our old house, where all three of us used to live, before dad died, and Nathan, my brother, moved out to live with his pycho-ass wife. I had a steady job at a local nightclub, and had no social life to speak of.

Sure; I was friends with co-workers, and, _sure_ , I was nice enough to customers, but I had no one outside of work. I just preferred it that way. I lead a lonely life, but I had my brother and that was enough. Him dying did nothing but make me even more reclusive. (I won't speak about my fear of getting close to others in case they died and left me alone, because I didn't _have_ that fear.)

Rewinding a little, I have to admit that I lied. I wasn't intoxicated, and it would honestly be an insult to my profession if I was to be so easily. No, I was over-emotional.

Why? And, I know the answer is silly, but just hear me out first, ok?

Re-watching One Piece and seeing Ace acting like, well, _himself_ , brought back unwanted feelings and emotions I thought to have long since been buried.

He reminded me so, _so_ much of Nathan it physically _hurt_. From his freckles, right down to his fucking narcolepsy, Ace was the fictional character to my brother's non-fictional one.

So I downed those two bottles of wine, and I left the episode running. I ignored the rain soaking my pajamas, the mud seeping into my socks as I ran across the grass. I fought past the numbing in my fingers as I banged on the door, and I screamed bloody murder at the woman who opened it.

That was how I died, curses on my lips, tinted a pale blue from the cold, as I lay on the muddy grass. It wasn't clean, it wasn't heroic, and it definitely wasn't honourable. I died, and the white-handled _Katana_ in my chest could prove so.


	2. Waking Up (pt. 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see by the chapter title *furiously jabs fingers upwards* it's part 1. This chapter was originally longer, but I decided that it would be better to cut it off like this!
> 
> This Zoro will be crossdressing(for those who didn't read the tags) but no ridiculously big boobs for the 'reveal'... Saying that, I have one hell of an idea for that, and I plan for her reveal to be after the timeskip *cackles*.. Obviously some characters are gonna find out *coughs*Robin*coughs* because how could she not? And others may, possibly, be in denial and purposely ignorant *coughs*Sanji*coughs*...
> 
> ANYWAYS! Enough rambling.
> 
> Enjoy.

**"Where there's good, there's bad. Maybe that's why I was so attracted to him. It was a magnetic pull that I couldn't ignore, no matter how hard I never tried to."**

* * *

"Push!"

The woman on the hard, worn bed, screeched in agony and clamped down on the hand in her grasp as she tightened her lower muscles and _pushed_.

(I screamed. And screamed, and _screamed_. My voice cracked, it burned and then bled.)

"I see it! Just one more, Kiyoko-san!"

She sucked in a sharp breath at the command, and she strained to follow it, teeth grinding together in frustration at how slow the process was.

(The sound of my painful cries reached no man's ears, and that alone fueled the fire in my aching soul just to be heard.)

"It's a girl!"

Her head hit the pillows behind her as a wave of exhausting passed over her, and she tiredly blinked up at the spinning ceiling. "Is she as beautiful as I imagined, Wakahiro?"

(I _desperately_ craved the sound of nature and the treading of footsteps, even light breathing of humans as they polluted and destroyed the world around them. Never have I loathed the living like I did now.)

The room fell silent at her breathless sigh, the scattered nurses and doctor sharing a look of hesitance, and the woman's partner sent her a strained smile when she blinked up at him from the silence.

"Y-Yeah... She is.." He gulped at the frown the doctor sent his way, and gently raised his hand to wipe at his wife's sweaty forehead. "You should rest-"

" _No_ ," she ground out, blinking as she heaved herself up and swatted at his hand, "And before you say anything; I'm fine."

Wakahiro shook his head at her antics, dark green strands falling out of his ponytail as he did so, "Ok, if you insist."

(I feared... I _feared_ , that my broken melody of sorrow was to go unheard, and that I would be left alone to suffer for all eternity.)

She gave a sharp nod and turned her attention to the hunched back of the doctor who helped delivered her baby, and frowned when she heard rushed whispers leave his lips.

"Why isn't she crying?" She croaked, gripping the sheets as her heart thumped against her ribcage.

(I wept tears of jealousy, bled wailing songs of companionship, and spewed stuttered shouts of heartache at the black-hole I found myself in.)

The man's eyes widened at the question, and he laid a shaking hand on her shoulder, only for it to get brushed off. "Kiyoko-"

She glared at him, tears gathering at the corner of her eyes as she angrily demanded, "Why isn't she _crying_ , Wakahiro?!"

(Days, weeks, months or years. I lost track of the time, many awhile back, but I never forgot the croak of my own voice that started to sound just as empty and void like the vast space of pitch black nothingness surrounding me.)

He stumbled back away from the bed in a panic, and tried to ignore the heartbreaking look she gave him.

"Tell me she isn't dead."

He frantically shook his head, "No- no, I can't-" He choked on a sob, guilt clawing at his insides because he failed. He couldn't give her the very thing she always wanted, and now... and _now_ , he couldn't even muster the courage to lie to her.

"Tell me she isn't _DEAD_!"

(When I was in the world of the living, I had never been a happy soul; always taking on a pessimistic outlook on the world as I buried myself in all the wrongdoings, immorality and disgusting parts of it that everyday people seemed to overlook.)

He opened his mouth to reply, but snapped his jaw shut when he saw the doctor approaching them, his arms gently holding what he guessed to be his daughter, and he sucked in a sharp breath at the glassy eyes that stared up at him from its tomb of white blankets.

"She isn't."

(I lived and _breathed_ in the toxins that they avoided, so it came as no surprise when I so easily accepted my death.)

He stared down at the bundle in his wifes arms, and a small part of him screamed at him that there was something very, very, wrong.

"Oh, isn't she gorgeous!"

He found himself numbly nodding at his wife's gushes and coos, and he tried so desperately to not look down at the baby who's eyes focused on nothing and everything at the same time.

_That-_

"She seems to be in good health, gave us a bit of a scare there, but everything is normal."

- _is not his child._

"Hiro! Come and hold your daughter!"

_Nor will it ever be._

He forced a smile on his face, "Ok."

Because as much as he wanted to turn around and run out of that door, he couldn't. Not with those blank, glassy eyes watching him. But it was the way they weren't watching him, and how they seemed so far away and caged in their own mind that had him freezing in his steps.

(I was lost, but I had no urge to find myself again. I became someone, or some _thing_ , that normal, living humans couldn't even begin to fathom.)

"Hiro?"

He nervously gulped, trying to push down the heavy choked sob that threatened to claw its way up his throat, and rip past his lips, "I-I... need to go." And off he went, not caring that the door slammed loudly behind him.

A terse silence shivered into existence at his stuttered reply, and the doctor sighed in knowing.

"It happens," he mumbled, "Some people just can't handle the responsibility and-"

"That's not it," Kiyoko interrupted with a hoarse whisper, "He isn't like that!"

The doctor shook his head, "It doesn't matter whether he's like that or not, it can happen to anyone, and at anytime."

(It was dark in this abyss, but it slowly became my light. And before I knew it, I was _home_.)

Tears left her eyes and dripped down onto her child's white blankets, and she serenely smiled at the child as she bent down to kiss her forehead.

"Your father's an idiot, ne, Zoro-chan?"

......

He couldn't.

He couldn't, he couldn't, he _couldn't_.

Those eyes. Watching; always. Knowing, judging, _seeing_.

His breath came out in jagged pants as he drunkenly stumbled down the few corridors, "It knows," he weakly puffed, eyes mad and flickering around the place, "How does it know?!"

He pushed open the double doors and drunk in the sound of a crashing waves and howling winds, "I just need to be careful and then-" He choked, those godawful pitch black eyes of his- not his, _never_ his- child flashing in his mind and jarring him forward.

"Nononono," he chanted, his feet weighing him down as he slowly dragged them across the dampening grass, "Please- no," he begged, clutching at his hair as his feet came to a stop and he choked back a sob when he realised just how close to the cliff's edge his feet had taken him.

Crouching down, his straining eyes fearfally stared at the crumbles of soggy earth that fell off the cliff. He couldn't help the way his mind thought of that child's small hands giving him that little _push_ over the edge, and spilling all his secrets, all of his adultery, for the world to hear as he fell to his death.

He couldn't help the way his heart painfully thumped against the confines of his chest, and all of his blood rushed to his forehead, face staining a blotchy red, as he exploded under the non-existent pressure.

"Not Kiyoko- don't tell Kiyoko!" He suddenly screamed in a panic, and he felt the world tip sideways as he threw himself forward and over the fradgile edge that led to the roaring waters below.

 _Those eyes_ , he thought, lips parted in a silent scream as he plummeted to his untimely death, _Those eyes belonged to a predator, and I didn't want to be hunted._

* * *

**"If you're a monkey, where's your tail?"**

* * *

There was something wrong with her daughter. 

It had been six years since she had given birth to her beautiful baby girl, and she-

"Ne, what should we do today, Zoro-chan?"

- _hadn't uttered a single word._

A silent tear dripped down her face, and her smile strained to keep its flowery demeanour, "How about going outside, hm?"

The child loosely propped in her arms didn't reply, lips agape and eyes far, _far_ away.

The woman chewed her lip and squeezed her eyes shut as she continued to dress the terribly small child, silently telling herself that everything will be ok.

Because it _wasn't_ as if her husband threw himself off a cliff, it _isn't_ as if her child, her beautiful baby girl, didn't move, speak, or feel, and it _certainly_ wasn't as if her financial situation plummeted ever since she quit her part-time job as a seamstress to look after her daughter.

"It's ok," she whispered, cradling the quiet child against her chest as she quivered, "Everything will be ok."

It had to be.

* * *

**"'Cause this is thriller! Thriller-bark!"**

* * *

I was.... content. Even though I felt like I was just a pair of eyeballs floating around in this fuzzy space, watching through some blurred screen of sorts and out into, what I guessed to be, a reality; a world- universe, even.

It felt like watching TV with the remote stuck down the side of the sofa. As in, what was on the 'TV' was only bearable because I couldn't be bothered to fish around for the remote.

I don't... I _couldn't_ , keep track of time. All that I had learnt; how to read an analogue clock, what the smaller, and bigger, hand stood for. The information slid through my numb fingers, almost as if it were barely there in the first place.

It made sense, when I thought about it, that telling the time, the day or, hell, even the year, would be a hardship. For there was no clock, and there was no calendar. Everything just.... was.

I wasn't alive, and I wasn't dead. But, at the same time, I wasn't living, nor was I dying. I was somewhere painfully in between.

The days, hours, minutes, seconds, all merged together and blended into nothing. I, was all there was and all there ever would be. What made me, well, _me_ , seemed to make me not me.

I had stared out of those misty windows one day(ha, eyes are the windows to the soul, huh) and couldn't look away when I caught someone staring right back at.... _me_. It took me a few seconds to recognise the voice whispering in my ear telling me how adorable I was, and I realised that what I was staring at, was a mirror, and the woman beside me was my mother(?)

My pale, alabaster skin, my dark, unruly locks; even my soulless, deep, brown eyes, were gone.

Gone were my sickly, thin arms that lifelessly swung at my sides as I stumbled down the streets. Gone were my chapped lips that rasped and croaked out scathing remarks. Gone was my crooked nose that was broken many a time when I was younger. Gone, was me, and here lay my polar opposite.

The greenest of locks sprouted from their head, and brushed the top of their ears is a mass of curls and blunt spikes. I remember being highly amused when I had first noticed it, and I couldn't stop the image of a certain _Marimo_ from flashing before my eyes.

Bronze, tanned skin slithered across the arms, legs, and childishly flushed cheeks, that made up this body. Lips plumper and agape in a misplaced wonder. Nose wider and button shaped, brand spanking new, with no signs of being broken.

This body, this _tiny_ , childlike body, was mine. Yet, at the same time, it _wasn't_.

I didn't miss my old self. I didn't miss my life, and I certainly didn't miss anyone I had left behind. Anything and everything I had departed from, had all been material. And when that sword had pierced my fragmented heart, I wept in content.

It was finally over.

Except, it wasn't, really. And I seriously doubted it ever would be.

* * *

**"Have I ever told you how much I love your legs? That's because I don't. Get those cactuses _away_ from me, curlybrow!"**

* * *

When I had woken up, like, really, _really_ woken up(can't exactly remember when it was I went to sleep), the first thing I saw was the swinging of feet, and I had looked up, terribly detached from the situation, only for my glazed eyes to lie upon the rope-tied neck of a young woman.  
****

I blinked and stumbled back on my tiny, _tiny_ feet.

"Z-Zoro-!"

I sucked in a sharp breath at the choked cry of a voice, and I couldn't help the quivering of my lips as I held my hands up to my head in fright. "W-What?"

Her face turned blue, lips swelling and eyes blending into a bloodshot red the longer she hung there; the longer I _watched_.

There was..... _There was nothing I could do_. It was too late for any salvation that she silently begged me for. It was too late for me to wrack my brains and scramble it for a solution. It was too late, and we both knew it.

So, it was with a pounding heart and trembling limbs, did I stumble to run, scraping my knees at the many times I fell, palms bleeding from my blunt nails mercilessly digging into them, and elbows hitting whatever was in my way from my blurred vision as the offending water leaked from my eyes and dripped down my cheeks.

I ran, and I didn't look back. I ran, fully well knowing that it was this bodies' mother lifelessly swinging from those fragile, wooden beams.

I ran..... and ran, and _ran_.

....

Days later- no, hours later(it had only felt like days), I had found myself hunched over in a dark alley. A bit too cliché for my tastes, but I had more important things on my mind.

Like why in the _fuck_ I was in some kid's body, not to mention how the fuck that was even possible.

Maybe some heavenly deity thought my previous, slovenly life was worth this half-assed, botched reincarnation. Or maybe, I was actually in a coma and this is all in my shitty head.

Even though the former sounded very appealing, seductive even, like, by _god_ did I want to believe it; the latter was a hell of a lot more realistic and, shit, I wasn't a saviour or jesus in skinny jeans so, _really_ , why would I be given a second chance?

I panicked, because it was the only logical course of action that my brain seemed to spit at me.

I lent my forehead on the damp, brick wall and let out a sigh of frustration.

Here I was, shrunken, de-aged, and sporting bruises. I briefly wondered if the name that woman- dead, _very_ much dead, woman- called out, was well and truly mine. It had the potential for everything to finally make sense. I had the green hair, I had the no-parents-thing recently checked off, now all I was missing was three swords and the matching gold earrings.

I was very much jaded, I knew that much(ha, and now you did, too). Seriously. Who thinks about whether they were currently a fictional character after witnessing a violent possibly-could've-been-avoided-death?

I didn't feel guilty, not in the least, and the only reason I dwelled on _her_ death, was because it had always been in my nature to question the could've been- what would've been if I had acted differently. Like what would've happened if I hadn't gone to that wretched woman's house that night?

The answer was simple: I wouldn't have died. But I did, and now- I took a deep breath- and now, everything that has been, will be and _is_ , doesn't change the fact that I gladly would've done it again if it meant ending my scarcely lived life.

* * *

**"I like my eggs gooey and unfertilised, shittycook."**

* * *

So, I met Kuina.  
****

At the time, I thought nothing of it. She was just a girl who happened to stumble across my pathetic form. It was only a year later, on a sweltering hot day, that I realised she was _The_ Kuina.

......

"Why does he keep saying that?!"

I absentmindedly hummed at her angry shout, bokken quietly whistling through the air as I lazily swung it about with both hands loosely wrapped around the hilt.

"Maybe 'coz he's a dumbass?" I slurred, eyeing her out of the corner of my eye and raising an eyebrow as she whacked the straw pillars with her own wooden sword.

"Exactly- wait, _NO_! That's my dad, Zoro!"

I chuckled under my breath at her spluttered shout before bending down and picking up another bokken, "Sure. Doesn't exclude him from bein' as ass, though."

It was silent for a few seconds and I paused in my sloppy air-slicing to look at her over my shoulders.

"Ugh," she groaned, "Whatever. He's just so sexist, you know?" She sighed, scratching the side of her head with a frown.

I slowly blinked, "Actually, I don't," I mused with a quirk of my lips, "Or did you forget that I have a dick, no matter how small it is at the moment?" I didn't, but she doesn't need to know that.

Oh? I didn't tell you my fantastical plan of pretending to be a male? It was kinda scary how I could do so so easily, but maybe that was down to that fact that I was a child, and so was she, that it was a breeze in the park to pretend to be a boy when nobody knew any better. (Pft. It's not like I had any relatives to call me out on my shit, is it?)

"Oh my _god_ , Zoro!" She groaned.

I rolled my eyes at her incredulous shout and snorted, "Yeah, yeah. I know."

She huffed in reply before shaking her head at me, fond grin on her lips as she bent down to flick my forehead.

"Hey!" I indigently shouted.

She ignored my angered shout and snatched the bokken out of my hand, "How's your three-sword-style coming along?"

I hissed at the question, narrowing my eyes at the offending object in her hand and slumped down against the straw post, "Complete and utter shit." I pouted, "Like, why the fuck did I even think putting a sword in my mouth was a smart idea?"

She grinned at me, so I glared at her in retaliation, "Why didn't you stop me? I could've had those baby teeth for a while longer, you know."

"But you looked _sooo_ cute trying to be stronger than me that I just couldn't tell you how ridiculous you looked!"

I blanched, "Wow. I sure can rely on you, huh?"

"Shut up!"

I snickered before rolling my eyes and regarding her form that sat slouched beside me and tentatively spoke, "Why do you keep-"

"I just.... I want to prove him wrong," she quietly interrupted, staring down at her lap with pursed lips.

I raised an unimpressed eyebrow at her, "And how are you going to do that?" I lazily drawled, wiping across my forehead before slowly standing up.

"By becoming the world's best swordsman!"

I absentmindedly hummed under my breath, and swiped up the practice swords strewn about. "Good," I said, strolling past her with a firm nod of my head.

"Zoro... What are you going to do when you're older?"

I ignored her and shuffled the bokkens so I held the three of them against my chest. "Mh. Good question," I replied.

"Oh, come on!"

I awkwardly shrugged and started the long trek down the stretch of stairs, "Maybe I'll join a zoo; meet a monkey with no tail.. Who knows," I trailed off, hearing her stumble after me.

"You make no sense," she blurted out from me beside me, and I sent her a bemused smile.

"I do. You just don't get it."  
....

That wasn't the day I found out who she was. Oh, I knew who her _father_ was, in the very far recesses of my mind, meaning, I, essentially, knew who _she_ was. I kinda just.... ignored it? I mean, what else was I supposed to do; tell them? No. For the past year and a half, I ignored the fact that Kuina was _Kuina_ , and I lived.

That all came to a halt when her dad, Koshiro, came bursting out into one of my training sessions.

"ZORO!"

I froze.

" _ZORO_!"

Something was wrong, and I wasn't the cause of it.

"Z-Zoro..." He stuttered, breaths coming out in harsh pants from running up those long stretch of stairs-

Oh. _Oh_.

I ripped the sword from out of my mouth and frowned, "It's Kuina, isn't it?" I sighed, sympathy washing through me as I watched him drop to his knees in front of me.

"S-She-!"

I sucked in a sharp breath, because: _how could I forget?_

Well, it wasn't as if I had an eidetic memory, now is it? Except, I actually did. I never truly forgot anything, but some memories needed jogging, like now with the stairs.

He sucked in a sharp breath and lent down on his knees, hands tightly clutched on my shoulders as he looked right into my eyes wide with shock.

"Promise me something, Zoro," he mumbled, quickly blinking away his tears.

"Uh," I said, confused at the sudden request, before slowly nodding, "Sure..." I hesitantly agreed, skeptically pursing my lips.

"Become the world's best swordsman in her stead."

That.... _that_ , was how my story began.


End file.
